Public radio’s American Routes is celebrating its 15th anniversary on the air with a dance and concert in New Orleans and a discount for stations adding the show. The April 19 concert at the New Orleans Rock ‘n’ Bowl will feature the Treme Brass Band, the Lost Bayou Ramblers, Irma Thomas, Ivan Neville and other luminaries of the Louisiana and New Orleans music scenes. Sponsored by WWNO-FM in New Orleans, the fundraiser for the music program will be recorded and distributed to stations for broadcast during the week of July 4. Hosted by folklorist and anthropology professor Nick Spitzer, American Routes airs on 260 stations.

Veteran pubcaster Mary Pruess, who resigned her position as president and general manager of WNIT-TV in South Bend, Ind., in October 2012, takes over April 22 as director of WQPT-Quad Cities Public Television in Moline, Ill. “Mary’s expertise in public broadcasting and community outreach will further enhance WQPT’s outstanding level of service to the region,” said Joe Rives, vice president for Quad Cities and planning at Western Illinois University. Pruess spent a decade at WNIT, from 2002-2012. Previously, she served in several managerial positions at WHRO-TV in Norfolk, Va.; was deputy director of TRAC Media Services in Tucson; c.e.o. of the Public Television Programmers Association; program manager at KHUT-TV in Houston; and held various posts at KAET-TV in Phoenix.

ImageMakers, the indie film showcase curated by San Francisco’s KQED TV, will debut the Oscar-winning film Curfew, May 12. Every year, KQED Program Director Scott Dwyer makes the film festival rounds and screens over 2,000 productions to curate a new season of ImageMakers, a series featuring short independent films from around the world. He rushed to buy broadcast rights to Shawn Christensen’s Curfew in January 2012, as soon as he watched it and well before the drama started gaining recognition. “In order to compete with places like Starz, Sundance Channel and HBO, I have to buy them really fast, before they start to win awards,” said Dwyer, whose film festival circuit includes the Aspen Shortsfest and the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

NPR Generation Listen, the network's new outreach effort for millenials, sees one-on-one interaction as the key to cultivating its younger fanbase.

Despite some impressive social-media cheerleading by several worthy competitors, the winner of KPCC’s Public Radio Brackets is This American Life. More than participants 50,000 chose their fave programs and as one commenter noted, “This was the toughest decision I ever had to make as a voter.”

Many broadcasters may be in for “unpleasant repacking surprises” following the FCC’s upcoming spectrum auctions, writes Washington, D.C., telecom lawyer Michael Berg on the TVNewsCheck media site. Stations on channels below 31 think they won’t be moved or reconfigured, but this will vary by market, he writes. And a station can be repacked even it it remains on its current channel. “It is important for television broadcasters to be aware of ongoing developments, and not to assume prematurely that repacking won’t affect your station,” Berg notes.

Facing a $400,000 funding shortfall, Maine Public Broadcasting Network said Friday it will lay off up to 12 percent of its workforce and put a locally produced show on hiatus.

Pledge results reported by public TV stations from recently concluded on-air fundraisers were down 20 percent to 25 percent from the March 2012 drive, according to Kristen Kuebler, director of station research for Arizona-based TRAC Media. For most stations, the March fund drive is typically the biggest of the year, and revenues generated from it influence budgeting for the next fiscal year. Stations reported to TRAC and PBS that audience response to the latest pledge shows was tepid at best. The top-performing show among TRAC’s client stations was Magic Moments: The Best of ’50s Pop, a program that was first released for public TV broadcasts in 2005.

Radio for the deaf,” a captioning technology developed and refined through an NPR Labs partnership, is moving into mainstream broadcasting with Latino USA

Google released updates to its Google Currents news-curation app March 20, including enhanced audio capabilities, and Minnesota-based American Public Media is taking advantage of them. The free app, currently available on Android platforms, has a structure similar to those offered by other digital news curators such as Flipboard and Pulse. Users subscribe to feeds from news outlets that appear as simple RSS lists or, if the provider has signed a licensing agreement with Google, as enhanced magazine-style content. Its latest updates include audio playlists and media bars with options to pause and skip tracks. More than 10 million users have installed Currents since its December 2011 launch.